Series of Regrettable Events
by True Love's Kis5
Summary: God didn't settle somewhere in a shelf of Heaven, or in the Carribean, nor in barren deserts, or moist wastelands. He didn't hide with a woman, or an angel, he hid with the gods and monsters. God hid in perdition, where he could not be found. "Well motherfucker, looks like we need to have a talk about Where's Waldo," growled Gabriel.
1. The Love of an Angel

He was not sure that love was possible for a beast such as himself, or what love would even feel like if it were possible. He knew that Loki had felt love before, had acted upon it, but Loki was a mask and not at all a real being. He was only a personality that Gabriel had conjured up from somewhere deep inside of himself.

Still, Loki had felt love. It was in the way he spoke quietly to Kali when he was cold with all others, brushed her hair away from her face, kissed her calmly, never included her in the terrible games that he played with the humans. He loved her with all of his soul and heart, but Gabriel had never felt such love.

Gabriel was Heaven's greatest weapon, and like gun powder, he was allowed to do nothing but wait or kill. He'd never allowed himself to be anything but a great weapon, and somewhere underneath all of his mischievous masks, he was still nothing but. Anger ripped through his being like an explosion, and when it did, he killed, maimed, and destroyed. Love wasn't part of the equation.

Still, he thought musingly, that the anger of an angel must be greater than the love of an angel. Or perhaps they were very similar after all.

They both included hatred, anger, passion, strength, greed, destruction, and they both sucked life out of the people who dared to act on them.

Looking at her now, Gabriel thought that it would be very hard to love Kali. She was beautiful, her dark chocolate curls framing beauty's incarnation, her eyes warm when she looked at him, or who she thought he was. Beautiful, yes, but she was destruction, death, and hatred. Gabriel had so much of those things in himself, he did not think he could love her. She gave him so much; sex, love, drive, passion, but he thought that he could give her more than she could ever hope to reciprocate.

Yes, he thought, the love of an angel must be something to behold. But he was not sure he knew what love was at all.

Kali turned her head to him, watching him with the hint of a smile. "What are you doing?" It was not a true smile; Kali never smiled. Not unless he'd done something to hurt her, and that was not truly a smile, but a grimace. A grimace that told him clearly that he'd pay later for what he'd done.

"I love you," he lied.

"I love you too." She was not lying.

The love of an angel must be something to behold, and if you measured Gabriel in how many people he loved, he would be a dull glow. He didn't know what love was, but he thought, maybe it would not be so terrible to love her, if anyone at all.

Maybe he liked hatred. Maybe he liked death and destruction. Maybe he liked her.

Or maybe, just maybe that was what love was.

Maybe that was why his father had left him all of those years ago. Maybe his love was so destructive that he could not contain himself, loving so many. If love is destruction and love is hatred, it must have been overwhelming. Especially when all of his sons and daughters in Heaven were weapons. Nothing but weapons. It must be difficult to love so many, and have no love in return.

Because weapons cannot love.

And Gabriel is nothing but a weapon. Still, as he watched Kali, he found that perhaps she was a weapon, too.

Careful precision, red lips.

Ruby pout, circles,

dark skin, calm,

eye of the storm, love

battlefield amour, Kali.

She was destructive, and beautiful, and maybe those were the same things after all.

And Gabriel was nothing if not destructive. If she wasn't lying about her love, then maybe, just maybe.

She could teach him how to love her ruby red lips, the dark circles under her eyes, her beautiful calm like an eye of the storm, because they all made up what he knew to be the reincarnation of love.


	2. Family Portrait

His amber eyes were like whisky, but they were not like the sun. They were whisky filtered in yellow sunshine, golden, hazel, sunshine-tainted brown. Blood in the morning of a bright day's battlefield, death under the eyes of the moon. He was the fallen, tainted, filtered, defying, mischievous in the best of days, but in the worst of days, he was dark, angry, hideous, death, destruction, time, age, youth.

He sat down gingerly in the patch of grass, remembering when this very location had sprung with battle and bloodshed, and he smiled. The blood seemed to act as some kind of fertilizer, because flowers assembled in clumps, red, purple, pink vibrancy.

It was rare when Gabriel was ever alone. He heard voices in his head when he was alone, but they were not his own. They were Castiel's blue eyes, wide. If Gabriel's eyes were as golden as his wings (and they were not,) then Castiel's eyes were the color of his soul. Not white, not pure, but the color of the sky. Freedom; unabashed freedom. And he heard the voice of Anna, and of all of the siblings that he left alone. Sometimes, in the darkest of days, he heard Lucifer's menacing whispers just behind him, as if following him. He sometimes thought that they were.

So he stayed with others, tortured humans, or he was with Kali, and sometimes he even had friends, though that was not often. He found that acting like a god was more difficult when he truly liked someone.

Kali was different. Everyone acted when they were in love. He was not in love, but he was acting like he was in love. And acting like he was in love was the same as acting like he was someone else all together.

There was something beautifully tragic about that.

Still, despite his problems, the flowers still grew. He wished they would fucking stop. But life went on.

It didn't matter; he was still trapped in his past, when he was still Gabriel (not Loki), a weapon, a piece of art, and part of a great painting. Part of a family.

...

Heaven was all of the things that one could imagine. It was the smell of a grandmother's cognac perfume, not because it smelled particularly good. Gabriel used to joke that it was because there were so many old people in human, spraying about.

Castiel was never amused. He'd always had some great respect for age. He said that it aged a person like whisky; they became more tasteful and wise.

Gabriel thought it just made them wrinkly. He never said that, though. Cas himself was wise for an angel of such a young age. He'd been the approximate human age of 13 with two large black pairs of wings. Like the devil, and sometimes when Gabriel looked just out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Lucifer in Cas' blue eyes.

Castiel was a lot like Lucifer, actually. He was beautiful, charismatic. The second Cas said a word, people flocked to listen though he was very young. He had no want to be mischievous, and preferred to help those in need, but still, Castiel haunted Gabriel like the portrait of a dead brother.

The memory that Gabriel was musing over today was the time he was sitting on a cliff face of Heaven, letting his legs hang blissfully off of the edge. It felt like flying, but it wasn't as difficult, and he could escape the smell of cognac here, he could escape almost anything, except the presence of Lucifer. It wasn't like Lucifer's presence was haunting him exactly, because he didn't really want it to go away. He wished it would stick around, like the smell of perfume. He wished that Lucifer would come back. That he would be his big brother again.

But until then, he was sitting there, looking out over Heaven. And Castiel was sitting next to him. If Gabriel closed his eyes, he could pretend that Castiel was Lucifer instead. It wasn't so hard, really, but it was disgusting. So he turned to look at Castiel, who really did not look much like Lucifer at all, and he brought him closer, and he whispered in his ear.

"My brother, we are immortal. We are like the birds who sing in the sky. And if we die, nothing will live. We are life itself."

"No," said Castiel wisely. "We are death."

...

Looking back on that moment, he had to disagree. Gabriel thought that they weren't life or death. They weren't anything so powerful. Gabriel had all of the power in the world, yet he could not make the flowers stop growing. And he couldn't turn back the clock.

His mistakes were the aging whisky in his eyes.


	3. Requiem of a Soul

Clawed at the bars, beat like a heart to the ribcage, screamed like a roasted pig, but he was frozen. It was cold in Hell, and it never stopped being cold. It was the unrelenting Winter that lasted years and years, but the season never changed, like time itself had stopped.

Gabriel could imagine Lucifer there, but he wasn't in Hell anymore. He was about three feet from Gabriel, and this time he was the one frozen.

He pulled Kali closer to him, protectively. He found it strange that she was the first one he thought to protect. Until that moment he'd been rather sure that he didn't love her. She had tried to kill him after all.

Okay, that had hurt. Maybe he hadn't loved Kali, but he'd trusted her more than any other living being. More than Lucifer, Castiel, or Michael. If that was love, then he loved her more than anything. And he wasn't sure it was, but he sure wanted to protect her from the demented creature that Lucifer had become.

They couldn't see it, but Lucifer was still beautiful.

His wings were still white despite Hell's taint, they were raised high above his head like a dove's, his eyes like the clear water from before life. From when the lakes were all so clear that Gabriel could see to the bottom of them just by looking. He was still more brilliant than Gabriel could ever remember, and he found himself taking in a harsh breath. He'd never felt so imperfect.

So he acted imperfect. He smirked, made sure that he acted like Loki, like he was supposed to. And said something that he would definitely regret. It's hard for him to remember now, but he thinks it was something relating his brother to dicks?

Well, it wasn't a lie exactly. And he'd sent Kali away.

He had to think fast, he couldn't just let Lucifer kill him, could he? Perhaps he could use Lucifer's arrogance against him.

Lucifer was sure that Gabriel wasn't very intelligent, that he'd learned everything from his older siblings. So if only Gabriel could use that against him... An idea popped in his head like a lightbulb, brightening his eyes and his wings fluttered impatiently, as if ready for war. It had been so long since he'd come up with a battle plan. His body was impatient for the blood.

But he wouldn't be killing anyone today, no. No one except himself.

He silently made a copy of himself behind Lucifer and grinned cockily. He said something snarky, he's sure, though he can't remember now. And just as he'd suspected, Lucifer shoved the blade inside of his copy, not himself.

He then forced his copy to fall to the floor, and burnt the fake's wings into the ground. Then he disappeared.

...

He didn't tell Kali he was alive for a long time, but that's a story for next time.

Just then, he went to find Castiel. He wanted to warn him, remind him that Lucifer was not the sweet angel that either of them remembered. They remembered beauty, amour, France perfume, bright wings, doves, a soft voice, poetic words. Not what Lucifer had become.

But Castiel's blue eyes were not as innocent as he remembered. They were freedom, yes, but also a great deal of anger, and violence. His black wings fit him much better than they had before, though Gabriel didn't truly think that was his fault. He knew that Castiel had been put through a great deal of pain in his life. And pain was a motivator for evil. It was the black dye on white feathers and a white soul.

The darkness didnt' really scare Gabriel, though. It was the emptiness. Cas' soul was so damaged that parts of it ceased to exist. There were holes in the gray of his tainted soul. And it was horrible.

"Cassie-"

It was his brother who killed him that day, but not the one that they expected.

Castiel twisted the blade, looked at him cooly, but Gabriel wasn't fooled by his nonchalance. Another part of Castiel's soul died.

And Gabriel was sure that his would never recover.

"I won't let you hurt them," whispered Castiel. "You say you were going to help, but you -never- do. You are a parasite. You feed off of everything, but you never give anything in return.

Gabriel had no chance to reply. He was dead. There were not two imprinted wings on the floor, but six. And his whisky eyes stared upwards, no longer filled with the brightness of his miserable living.


End file.
